Businesses are critically reliant on effective and efficient communication. The drive to improve communication, in conjunction with rapid advances in processing technology, have lead to sophisticated messaging systems which handle voice, text, facsimiles and other types of data. For example, instant messaging systems are available that support a text exchange between parties, along with basic presence indicators.
Presence indicators attempt to give a potential caller an indication of whether another individual is available to take a call, answer an instant message, or otherwise engage in a communication session. However, the presence indicators (e.g., ‘Busy’) are primarily manually set and adjusted, leading to inaccurate indications of presence. Thus, even though a caller may check presence prior to calling, the presence indicator is frequently incorrect. The caller then wastes time initiating a call and waiting for the callee to answer, only to be redirected to voice mail.
In limited cases, presence indicators are automatically set. As one example, an instant messaging program may watch for mouse, keyboard, or other user input. When no input is detected for a predetermined time period, the instant messaging program changes the presence state to ‘Away’ or another indicator of unavailability. However, whether an individual is present is not necessarily dependent on whether they are interacting with their computer. In other words, automatically set presence indicators are often no more accurate than manually set presence.
Each attempt to initiate a messaging session consumes valuable, limited, resources. Each time a caller places a call, for example, the supporting messaging system and network infrastructure consume a portion of those limited resources. Each call consumes processor time, network bandwidth, physical channel (e.g., TDMA time slot) capacity, and other resources. Nevertheless, in prior messaging systems, a caller would often attempt to establish a messaging session based on inaccurate or incomplete presence indicators.
A need has long existed for improved presence indication for messaging services.